


Stories of the Second Self: Through the Veil

by John_Steiner



Series: Alter Idem [67]
Category: Urban Fantasy - Fandom, mass shooting - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:13:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Steiner/pseuds/John_Steiner
Summary: High school graduation was just around the corner, so Miranda Imura and other teens from Norwood High celebrated with an open air party in a city park. However, the secret of many kids being supernaturals wasn't unknown to all humans. Some had taken offense that supernaturals intermingled with humans, and they were going to put a stop to it. Caught up in a mass shooting, Miranda flees only to encounter a vampire hoping the snap up a meal in the confusion. Along with her own magical talents, Miranda will depend on a friend she didn't know she had.
Series: Alter Idem [67]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1618813





	Stories of the Second Self: Through the Veil

Graduation was in two weeks, but Miranda and her friends decided to celebrate early. No one knew where they'd end up after high school. Especially with the supernatural becoming more prevalent, and more people seemed to be aware and incensed by that.

Sure enough, chaos erupted at the outdoor party Miranda's friends held at a city park. Some human group got all offended that supernatural teens were hanging out with human teens. It didn't matter than they all started high school as humans, or that they all were from Norwood High, or that many kids didn't let the change ruin their friendships.

What mattered is that kids scattered at the first gun shot. Unlike the usual mass shooting, where it was another kid, these eight guys were middle aged, mostly white, though Miranda made out two black men and an hispanic among them, and that they seemed more organized than a raging suicidal gunman.

Amid the running and screaming, Miranda lost track of her boyfriend, Julian. Her other friends all panicked as she had, and just fled. Miranda went further into the wooded area of the park and threw an illusion spell over herself before getting to the treeline. A shot snapped close by her just after, and she screamed.

After ducking behind some trees, Miranda felt over herself with moaning frets at the thought she might've been shot and didn't realize it. Yet, she didn't find an wetness on her searching hands, nor felt faint or cold from blood loss. If anything, her head was buzzing from the rush of blood and her heart rate pounded in her elfin pointed ears.

Miranda forced herself to calm down and peek through the trees. By now the area where the kids had been celebrating was filled only with discarded cups and snack containers. Of the guys who showed up to kill everybody, Miranda didn't see any of them either. She guessed that they chased after the other kids and didn't see her slip out.

Then came the sound of footsteps in the woods, and Miranda froze in dread. Without turning her head, Miranda cast her gaze everywhere her eyes could look. She checked to be sure that her nine-point antlers didn't bump into the tree trunk before her, or rustle a low hanging branch. Though crouched on spongy soil, Miranda dared not move her cloven feet to reduce the cramping she began to feel in her knees.

A movement caught Miranda's eye. A branch, engulfed in the shadow of night, and contrasting with the weak ambient light of distant city light, swung back and forth. No other branch was waving, and Miranda didn't feel or hear a breeze.

Hoping whoever it was would pass her by, Miranda became distraught when those steps instead drew nearer after untold minutes. Then the dark outline of someone's head came into view. Miranda couldn't tell if they were facing toward her or away, just that it seemed like a woman from the general sense of their hair.

Miranda's eyes becoming more accustomed to the dark after her initial ducking out from the better lit part of the park, she realized that, yes it was a woman and she wore some kind of leather jacket. Miranda figured that out from the soft creaking of leather as the woman moved. What else Miranda could make out was that the woman's eyes seemed like two abyssal holes in her shadow enveloped face, when her attention was to something off to the side.

However, then the woman looked right at Miranda. It wasn't the leather jacket or dark eyes that sent a chill down Miranda's spine. It was the sly smile that crept onto her face as the woman looked in her direction. Behind the parted lips of that mischievous grin glinted inhuman teeth.

With everything about Miranda that changed, her teeth looked not much different, other than being straighter and whiter than when she was human. Though the werewolves of Norwood High did change into canine features, their wolf teeth didn't look exaggerated compared to real wolves, and they went back to human normal afterward. Of the few angels Miranda saw outside of school, none of them seemed too different beyond their wings and buffed-up chest.

Yet, this woman's needle-pointed teeth were curved inward. Miranda had heard urban legions that vampires now were supposedly real, but no one had described them the same way. She was sure that's what leered at her from the expression of hungering desire on the woman's face.

Up to now, Miranda only knew of other Fae being able to see through illusion spells, but this woman of the night stared right at her.

"Come on," the svelte sounding woman soothed, "Don't be shy."

Miranda started to shutter, despite her strain to hold still.

"You don't need to hide from me," the woman added, as though to a child huddling from monsters in the closet. "Come out. I won't hurt you."

Miranda unconsciously shook her head, and her heart pounded from awareness of the mistake.

"I heard the gunshots, and came here to see what happened," the woman claimed. "But they're gone now, so you can stop hiding."

"No," Miranda squeaked with a child's fright.

"Don't be that way," the woman said, shaking her head as a disapproving mother.

"How do you see me?" Miranda wondered, hardly aware she asked aloud.

"I see the heat," the woman revealed, "You've been there long enough to warm up that spot."

Miranda started crying silently, realizing that the stories of vampires were true. She heard sirens in the distance, and the woman also looked away at the sounds.

"If you don't reveal yourself I'll just have to go in there after you," the woman suggested with a hint of threat under the assuring maternal tone. "You don't want that."

"Can't you leave me alone?" Miranda meekly asked, "I won't tell anyone."

"I'm afraid I can't do that," the woman's words flowed like syrup through the air. "I've come up empty too many times tonight. I won't take enough to kill you, and you won't turn."

"How can you be sure?" Miranda asked, now willing to turn her head in search of an escape route.

"Ohh, I know, honey," dripped her silky sinister voice.

Miranda bolted at that instant, hardly aware of which way she ran, other than away. She couldn't see the ground her hooves pounded over, but she heard the woman distinctly cutting through the night woods right behind her.

Miranda screamed, "Help me! Somebody help me! She's gonna kill me!"

Miranda's surge of adrenaline allowed her to initially outpace the vampire, but after a couple hundred yards, her heaving panicked breathes grew more labored. She knew the vampire was a score of paces behind, but she couldn't hear the undead woman huffing from the sprint.

Before long, Miranda dashed out of the wooded area of the park to where light posts illuminated an open grassy field with chain-link partial dividers of baseball diamonds. Miranda dared glance back to see the woman still running after her, and moaned as she tried to speed up.

Having something in her purse for which to cast a defense spell, Miranda didn't dare go for it lest she slow enough to be caught and bitten before getting it out. Instead, she went for where she though the park ended, in hopes of reaching houses or stores to get help.

Sirens still sounded around the city, no doubt in response to the shooting, but Miranda was so far from that she doubted they could find her in time. Though, someone did.

There was a cushioned crash, like two football players on the school team colliding, and the vampire woman exclaimed in surprise. Miranda couldn't resist looking back, and found someone really large had tackled the vampire and they fell hard onto the ground together.

Unable to tell who it was, other than they seemed to wear something closer to a circus tent than a dress, the larger person rose up to drive a meaty fist down several times.

Through the vampire's own expletives and grunting, Miranda heard a voice she knew from school. "Don't you touch her! Never, never, never! Little bitch, you don't hurt my friends!"

"Gillian?" Miranda called out, and relief rose up through her spine and onto her face.

Gillian was the giant girl at the prom who almost won homecoming queen despite having been mercilessly teased for her ever growing size. An even larger bulk that she now used to save Miranda's life.

Miranda suddenly remembered the charm in her purse and fumbled to get it out. Still searching, Miranda heard Gillian gurgle from something that winded her.

"Get in my way at dinnertime?" the vampire shouted with her voice slipping into a screech. "Fine! I'll just settle for you, you fucking big-assed cow!"

"Hold on, Gillian!" Miranda cried, and finally seized her hands on the charm.

At last, Miranda brandished the charm and called out loudly, "Tesla is my light! Tesla is my life!"

Miranda didn't know who came up with the incantation, and had to look up why they referred to Nikola Tesla. Some inventor dude she never heard of. Yet whatever power he was reputed to have mastered before Alter Idem, it manifested all over the vampire in a tazing that racked her super-strong body.

Gillian also cried from the jolt, and rolled off to back away. Feeling more confident, Miranda strode toward the vampire, and then Miranda waved a hand before herself to dismiss the illusion spell. "Wha'chu gotta say now, bitch?"

The vampire went between screams and screeches, the latter hurting Miranda's ears, and some odd sound between the two. Then, Miranda pressed the charm closer and squeezed on it forcefully. Sparks erupted from the vampire's skin and clothes, and short angry flames jumped up in a flash and vanished.

Miranda powered up the spell to where it was burning the vampire, until she heard many other people racing toward the spot. Turning, Miranda saw men all wearing the same kind of clothes pounding over to her and reaching for their belts or already having guns drawn.

"Put it down and step back with your hands on your head!" one of them shouted.

Realizing they were cops, Miranda dropped the charm and did as told. Gillian stayed on her knees and bent over trying to breath.

"Gillian, are you okay?" Miranda pleaded.

"Ye-yeah," she gasped and nodded quickly, unable to look up.

One police officer came up behind Miranda and planted one of their hands on Miranda's shoulder as if to brace her in place. The officer's hand seemed smaller than a man's but no less firm.

She thought he might've had a gun pointed at her, and didn't move. Other cops went to Gillian and the vampire woman. Pointing lights into the vampire's face, they seemed to realize what was going on, and turned the vampire over to start cuffing her.

"Carpenter," one cop called out, "She's clean. Walk over there and ask her what happened."

Officer Carpenter took her hand off Miranda's shoulder and guided her away, as a couple other cops helped Gillian. During the half-hour that Carpenter questioned Miranda Gillian stayed by her side and comforted her while also answering questions. Six uniformed cops walked the vampire off the scene.

"Hey, you two stay with them a minute," Officer Carpenter said to two other cops, before she walked over to one of the police cars.

"How did you find me?" Miranda asked Gillian.

"I was working late and I heard you scream," Gillian answered.

Miranda hugged her more fiercely. "Thank you!"


End file.
